1. Redesigning High Schools: 10 Features for Success
- Author
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Learning Policy Institute, Linda Darling-Hammond, Matt Alexander, and Laura E. Hernández
- Abstract
Too many students still experience the factory model evident in most U.S. high schools, which were designed to put young people on a conveyor belt and move them from one overloaded teacher to the next, in 45-minute increments, to be stamped with separate, disconnected lessons 7 or 8 times a day. While these factory-model designs may have worked for the purposes they were asked to serve 100 years ago, they do not meet most young people's needs today. Many teachers, principals, and district leaders, along with students and parents, understand that schools must change in fundamental ways if they are to prepare today's diverse student population for higher-order thinking and deep understanding. Yet the inertia of existing systems is powerful. The good news is that models exist: A number of schools that have been extraordinarily effective and have helped other schools to replicate their success have important lessons to offer, based on the elements they hold in common. This publication outlines 10 of those lessons that constitute evidence-based features of effective redesigned high schools that help create the kind of education experience students need: safe environments where exciting and rigorous academic work occurs and where all groups of students succeed academically, graduate at high levels, and go on to college and productive work.
- Published
- 2024